3D Portfolio Guide

3D Portfolio lets artists show off their 3D artwork in real-time wherever they are. Importing your own assets into 3D Portfolio is easy — this guide will help you so that your models look their best.

Meshes

3D Portfolio supports .obj format. Currently only one mesh per file is supported, so be sure to combine them. 3D Portfolio will automatically triangulate quads, but it is recommended that you triangulate the mesh yourself in whatever software you create it in.

Position and scale the mesh in your 3D software. You can download the guide.obj to get an idea of how big it should be. Currently the polygon limit is 50k tris, but you’ll probably want to aim lower than that.

Textures

3D Portfolio currently supports diffuse maps, normal maps, and specular maps in .jpg and .png formats. It will detect them based on naming conventions (case sensitive).

Diffuse – example.D.png

Normal – example.N.png

Specular – example.S.png

Currently, shaders are automatically chosen based on the types of textures you upload. If you only include a diffuse map, it will use a “Vertex Lit” shader. Including a normal will set it to a “Bumped Specular” shader. More control over shader options is planned for the future.

Beware of using large resolution textures — you may experience memory issues in the app depending on your device. It will also increase load times. We recommend 512×512 or lower. If you have fewer assets in your gallery, you might be able to get away with higher resolution textures. Jpg is recommended over png for memory efficiency.

Uploading to 3D Portfolio

To get your assets inside the app, first compress them into a zip file and upload them to your webspace. If you don’t have a place to host your assets, we recommend Dropbox — it’s free and easy to use. Once they’re uploaded to your webspace, we recommend emailing yourself a link to the zip file so you can copy and paste it on your device into the app.

In 3D Portfolio, while viewing your gallery, tap the ‘Edit’ button and then tap the asset you want to update (or tap ‘Add New’ to create a new one) — tap the text box for ‘Asset Zip URL’ and paste the link using the on-screen keyboard. Tap ‘done’ on the keyboard and 3D Portfolio will download and import your assets. This may take several seconds depending on network speeds, mesh complexity, and file sizes. Files are saved locally for quicker loading in the future.

Note: both iOS and Android will cache downloaded data. If you update your asset on your web server, it is recommended that you rename the file so the URL is different. On Android you can flush the cache by force quitting the app, but it seems to persist for some time on iOS.

Lighting

In the Edit Asset menu, you can change the lighting for the asset. “Enable lighting” checkbox will toggle between fullbright (no shading at all) and one directional light. The two sliders under ‘Light Rotation” change the angle of the light — the top one changes the vertical angle while the bottom slider changes the horizontal angle. The “Fix light to camera” checkbox will toggle between having the light fixed to the model (lit parts are always lit, dark parts are always dark) or having the light fixed to the camera (moving the camera changes what parts of the model are lit). The three color sliders change the color and intensity of the light. For example, all three to the right is white. All three halfway would be gray (less intense white light). Red and green to the right with blue to the left gives you yellow. Because light settings are per-asset, each asset can be shown in it’s best light.

F.A.Q.

Why do we have to host our assets online?

Part of it is that it’s a good multiplatform solution that works fine on both iOS and Android. But mainly, we went this route because there are some really cool features planned for the future that would take advantage of this.If you’re concerned with having your models hosted online, you can delete them off your hosting after you’ve imported them into 3D Portfolio. 3D Portfolio downloads and saves your assets locally on your device so it can load them faster in the future.

How do I get a valid dropbox link to my zip file?

Right click the zip file on your computer and go to Dropbox>Share Link (might be different on Windows). That’ll bring you to a dropbox page where you can enter an email to share it with. Instead, click “Get Link” and it’ll copy the link to your clipboard (and also bring you to that page). That’s the link you should try to put into the app. It should clearly have .zip in the url.

What can cause the app to crash?

If you experience a crash, it is most likely using too much memory. Try to reduce the amount of memory you use in your gallery by using lower resolution textures and simpler meshes.